


I Remember Standing By The Wall (The Pax Natasha Remix)

by actonbell



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, MCU Rolling Remix 2016, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Remix, fugue state
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:06:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7318264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He said, with effort that would have been undetectable to anyone but her (and maybe Steve, before the war), not turning around: "They sent the Black Widow to finish me off? I'm flattered."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember Standing By The Wall (The Pax Natasha Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Let Slip the Dogs of War (The Hands of Achilles Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7184567) by [havocthecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat). 



> 8/5/2016 -- I stand revealed! well, to those of my friends who didn't guess me based on the potted Latin, the BPAL, the David Bowie-inspired title, or the endless sentences. (Seriously. End a sentence before it hits 20 words once in your life, girl, would it kill you. And the _commas.)_ This was the first remix I'd ever written, and I enjoyed it a lot, even though I think I didn't succeed that well at the actual, uh, remixing part. I remixed [havocthecat's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Havocthecat/) remix ["Let Slip the Dogs of War (The Hands of Achilles Remix)",](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7184567) and then [maharetr](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/) remixed my remix into ["Heart skipped a beat (The 'sometimes I still need you' remix)."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7457584) As you can tell from just that, the [MCU Rolling Remix](http://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/tag/fest:+mcu+rolling+remix) was different from most remix fests, and it was _awesome._ All praise to muccamukk, who came up with the idea and ran the whole thing like a Swiss watch. And we all got high-quality fic out of it -- [the remixers were talking](http://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1043167.html#comments) about how different the stories were, and how hard it was to guess who wrote what, and what order the stories had been in. It was great.
> 
> I don't usually reveal personal details like this, but I finished the story on June 27th, and it was the first story I'd been able to start, let alone finish, since my mom died near the end of March this year. So I'm grateful for that, too, and to Mucca and everyone else who participated, in being part of what helped me break through that. (I know, I have that epic RPF WIP hanging fire, I'm so sorry to its actual readers. I'm really going to finish it.)

_I've seen and done things I want to forget;_  
_I've seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat_

_these are the words that maketh murder_

\-- PJ Harvey

 

He watched them through the 10/50 binoculars he'd picked up cheap at the same Army Surplus (now that was a good joke -- he was nothing if not Army surplus himself) where he'd gotten the ball cap and jacket. Everything clean, no holes or worn spots in the clothes, his hands steady as if he were holding a gun, his vision clear even though there was no need to lipread. She knew he was watching -- or more likely, that he wasn't the _only_ one watching (Fury hadn't gone far off, or he might have dropped a bug) -- because it was all stagey, all show: the ostentatious handing off of the file in public, as if there really was no need for any secrecy anymore, the sisterly kiss for Steve on the cheek, the dramatic pause and turn, hair blown out obligingly by the wind like it was a spirit helper, the obvious warning. One last caution before the deadly favour was granted, just like in a fairy tale.

Steve ignored it as he always had, flipped open the file _right fucking there (Jesus Christ, Rogers,_ he could hear an earlier incarnation of himself yell internally, a younger and far more innocent soldier, _at least wait for cover)_. His lips thinned as he watched Steve's face, and he zoomed in on the picture without needing to, it was so familiar: the pale frozen face like something out of a legend, lost, a ghost. It wasn't really his past in that file, he tried telling himself again, and it didn't work, like all the other times it hadn't worked. He'd been a soldier, and then _the_ Soldier, forged into a living weapon. Even now he was still anybody's tool, for the use of whoever happened to pick him up. Even Steve could....no, Steve still saw him as _Bucky,_ wouldn't stop calling him that, wouldn't call him anything else. But he wasn't Bucky either, and hadn't been for a long time, maybe since the first time he'd put on a uniform; the first time he'd been handed dog tags with the unique number someone else had given him, and from then on that had mattered most, not a living name.

\-- He wondered idly what the hell had happened to them, anyway, for the first time in a long time. He was having too many thoughts like that recently -- too distracting, too _personal,_ raw emotions more than thoughts, really. _I want those fucking back. They were mine...._ But of course that wasn't true. They were just the label that had stamped him as Army property. Hell, they hadn't even belonged to him, legally, probably. He didn't need them. He didn't need a damn name, either. He needed what he had, cash and weapons and matériel and a shitty little bolthole that was his base of operations for carrying out what, as far as he could tell, was the last posthumous wish of James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, serial number 32557038 (even if all he could repeat, over and over again, was _32557...._ even the numbers going). Burn the last of HYDRA to the ground, piss on the ashes, and salt the God-damned earth. Since he had inherited the body, if not the soul, and since this body would apparently last forever and a day, it seemed like the least he could do for the previous tenant. He hadn't done those things detailed in the file and the SHIELD documents dumped on the internet, but his weapons had done it: his guns, his knives, his hands. It hadn't been him, but he had done it all. Maybe the Soldier's work didn't belong to him any more than Barnes's dog tags had, but it was on him all the same.

Even though she was still making her way among the headstones, careful not to step on the graves in those ridiculous knee-high boots with _heels (I taught you better than that, Nashenka)_ and he should have waited until she had been gone at least half an hour, he went back to the motel because suddenly he was tired, so tired; as if every single year of his long long life, whether in the ice or out, had finally caught up with him all at once.

Because you never really got to leave _the great game,_ as Pierce had once called it during one of his goddamn motivational speeches, that warm golden voice like poisoned honey, because once you joined in you were always living in a hall of mirrors -- he knew she knew he was watching her, and she was watching him. Like the perspective trick Steve had showed him once with a shaving mirror, in the bathroom of that lousy tenement: hold it the right way in front of the mirror over the sink and infinite reflections opened up, countless repetitions of their faces going back further than they could ever see, moving when they moved. Steve had started wondering aloud how the hell he could draw it, but he had shrugged it off _(yeah, Steve, real neat, now scram so I can finish getting ready)_ and tried his hardest to forget it, but that weird vision of numberless selves had hung over the whole evening out, like a pall of smoke. He and Natalia were like that now, her watching him watching her watching each other watch an endless series of themselves. Who knew how long it could go on? They were both damn hard to kill.

But by now he was tired of the game, instead of grimly amused, so he unlocked the door and then left it open -- not a lot, just a little but more than a crack, just the right distance an ordinary person might leave, forgetting security in the relief and momentary bustle of getting back home, even if it was to a hot-sheet dump. She hadn't rented a room there, which was smart, but she must be close, because she'd had eyes on him for just about a week, seeing where he went, what he did, where he bought, what he ate. He resisted the urge to lie flat on the bed and instead tossed his jacket on it, then the cap, rumpling up his hair where it felt stiff and sweaty -- he still needed to seem, if not homeless, then right on the edge of it, look like someone eyes would slide away from, a person people would determinedly not-see as they walked past, speeding up a little without knowing it. But his hair itched and felt greasy and worse, there was a fucking strange feeling it was _wrong,_ he shouldn't look like this. It wasn't like the first nightmarish times he had looked in a mirror and been unable to pick out a face, _his_ face, from the reflected objects surrounding it. No, now it was more like right after his nose had been broken, not getting Steve out of another damn scrape for once but in a match _(but who was I fighting? Who -- )_ and he'd kept being surprised by the little bump after it healed, still thinking it was straight.

He snapped out of it, a little startled, coming back to himself where he'd just kept on standing by the bed, slack-limbed and probably slack-jawed too, like a puppet with its strings cut. That kept happening, more and more often. They were fugue states, he guessed; maybe neurons firing oddly in his brain, if he was lucky, maybe mini-seizures if he wasn't. He didn't know what drugs might treat whatever it was, or even if they'd work on his system. He hadn't seen her pull into the motel lot, hadn't seen where she'd parked her burner car, hadn't watched while she walked across the cracked and pitted blacktop in those goddamn boots. But she was there. He knew, the way he'd known that she knew he was there at the cemetery. She was too good at being patient, and he wasn't anymore, so he stood with his back to the door open, jacket off, no visible weapons, no line of defense. _If you're fucking coming in come on the fuck in, then._ (Some dirty joke, something went like that, _not now_ but he couldn't remember -- )

He snapped out of it again, felt her weight displacing the air, almost like he could hear the change of frequency in the vibration of the molecules -- no, even for him, that was too much, that was crazy....the air seeping in through the open door was chilly, pricking the skin on the one arm he had left. The 'left' arm. (Now, that was funny.) He hoped she had _deliberately_ been that noisy, walking right up, that it was a put-on like the open door and his turned back, or he might start getting pissed off at the waste of all the time and energy he'd put into making her the best of the best. He could smell perfume, now that was a shock -- something she'd personally chosen, something _identifiable,_ not meant as part of a cover or some kind of signal. It was light, spicy, not quite flowery but sweet, a musky note underneath. Had playing civilian actually turned her soft? Or was this the best cover -- no cover at all?

She actually knocked twice on the fucking frame of the flimsy motel door (he knew, from his watching, how she still loved gestures and symbolism, but this was something else, to _know,_ almost before it happened) -- it was almost a parody of her respecting his space, pretending he had any privacy at all. To other eyes it might have looked like wary courtesy; he knew better. -- Jesus, he sounded like Steve when Steve had been ninety pounds sopping wet and most of it had been attitude. And now he felt like he couldn't even stand up straight, like he had 'flu or some damn thing. _Guess I really did turn into you, boyo._

He said, with effort that would have been undetectable to anyone but her (and maybe Steve, before the war), not turning around: "They sent the Black Widow to finish me off? I'm flattered."

He didn't realize he'd spoken in Russian until she said, "I'm unarmed," in the same language. Fuck. This was bad. He needed for her to go away and for him to leave this stuffy little room right now, find somewhere else, outside, in the open, a safe squat, a place where he could just lie with his back to a wall and sleep for hours, days, until whatever this was wore off. The last thing he needed was a fight, of any kind. Especially against her. Everyone saw her beauty, her size, her slenderness, her open seductiveness, and -- even if just unconsciously -- wrote her off, and she counted on that to the last millimetre. Thinking you could take the Black Widow, in any way at all, was the fastest, surest way to lose.

He successfully resisted the opportunity to make the worst joke of his life -- _Dum Dum would have cried_ \-- and said, "No, you're not."

"I come in peace?" From the sound of the sleeves of her leather jacket, she was actually holding her hands up, mocking. "Or, as you might've put it -- Pax?"

 _nolite arbitrari quia venerim mittere pacem in terram non veni pacem mittere sed gladiu --_ "You're the opposite of peace." He turned around, watched her face react to that, saw her lower her hands and slip them into her jacket pockets. "What do you want?"

"You're going to need me. Need my help." She got defensive at the incredulity he couldn't help showing, although his face felt numb, and went on: "I know what's going on. I know what you...." He saw her change her mind, shift strategies, but the knowledge felt out of reach, it wasn't something he could use. "You remember me?"

He had to laugh. "Now that's the sixty-four dollar question -- " But she was shaking her head, impatient.

"No, no, not that. I _know_ you know me. But I was here before. James. Don't you remember?"

Fuck it, he had to sit down. The motel was cheap enough the only things in the room were the double bed, the TV stand, the TV and one nightstand with a lamp. If he sat down, right now, he wouldn't get back up. He could feel sweat gathering along his hairline, a bead of it trickling down the side of his face, slower than an ant.

"You had a fever." He felt her glance, as if it were the touch of her hand on his forehead -- now that, he did remember. But he'd remembered it the way you remembered something from a dream, thinking it was real, but then felt that little slide, like losing your footing on an icy sidewalk, when you realized it wasn't. A beautiful woman sitting by your bed, holding your hand, wiping your forehead, humming something low and soothing -- too good not to be a dream, right?

"I thought you weren't real," he muttered, trying not to sway. "Like Steve, in the....when he got me out...." He'd thought he was about to die, so why wouldn't his brain give him the faces of the people he loved best? Even if they weren't there, it was a comfort. Probably had an evolutionary basis, a tranquilizer keeping the dying animal quiet and safe. Something flashed in her eyes, hurt or wariness or concern, he couldn't tell anymore.

"You made me leave that." She nodded at the nightstand next to him, and he automatically looked down, unable to even be on his guard that much, not to follow an obvious distraction. But she didn't spring for him, she still hadn't come in the room at all; wasn't even over the threshold. Maybe he had to invite her in, like in one of those old movies Steve used to love. It was a cheap woman's hairbrush, the bristles black and the handle red, both made out of plastic, something you could pick up in a thousand drugstores for less than a dollar _no that's not right, not anymore._ He could see a few red hairs glinting even in the low light, caught in the plastic tufts, and was shocked -- they could provide fingerprints, DNA, drug use history, toxicology -- she had compromised herself that badly, for him, had left him evidence she'd been there like a mother giving a token to a child. _Here, this is a piece of me, I need it, so I'll be coming back, you keep it safe for me._ And he hadn't even seen it, until she'd pointed it out....she couldn't have planted it, he was relatively sure he hadn't blanked out long enough for her to come that close to him and set it down. She'd won. It wasn't even that he did need her help; he'd already had it.

The little spider was going on, saying something urgently -- no, she wasn't little anymore. Well, she was still little, but not like she had been; not like the first time he'd seen her, when he'd been assigned to her group, and he remembered feeling despair at the thought that now there was another one of them in his life, another pipsqueak who didn't know when they were beaten. Now there were two of them, two people who were supposed to be little, whom he was supposed to protect, who he'd both failed. Who he'd tried to kill. _Several times,_ be honest, and somehow neither of them held it against him, still loved him, still wanted to help. Jesus God, what would it take to make them go the fuck _away?_ An atom bomb? "Leave me alone," he told her. He sat down heavily on the bed, buried his face in his hands. "I mean it, Natalia. Go. Now."

He tried to remember how to make a threat, but it was useless. The Soldier never threatened -- there was no warning: if he was there, you were dead -- and he didn't know how to make the corresponding human tone in his own voice anymore, the one that said not _I'm going to hurt you now_ but _I could hurt you but I don't want to. (I can't let that happen. Please -- don't make me do this.)_

"Steve'll kill us all if you die. Again." She was laughing. It was exactly what he'd trained her to do -- focus on the weakness, find it, push on it, never let up. She'd beaten him before they'd even started. It was what he had taught her: _win the fight before the first hit._ But if he was defeated, he'd already won, because there was nothing he wanted from her, nothing at all. From any of them. She still wouldn't shut up. "Or are you thinking, well, came back once, came back twice....third time lucky?"

"I tried to _kill you._ Twice. Aren't you even a little afraid I'll do it again?" he had to ask, his voice somewhere between peevish and exasperated.

"Why? You haven't been able to pull it off so far."

"Oh, Natalia." He'd fallen back on the bed so his arm was twisted under him and the metal, cold even through two shirts and a hoodie, bit into his flesh and the rough bedspread was scratching his cheek, but it was the closest he'd felt to comfortable in days. He felt her bootheels on the cheap flat carpet as if they were striking on his own skin, smelled the sweet perfume again, muskier and darker up close. "You don't have to be brave for me. Of all people."

He didn't try to defend himself; whatever she could give him, help or its opposite, he was willing to take, and he knew she'd also been just where he was now, helpless, dependent. He didn't mind losing; not this time.  He closed his eyes and waited for her to bring him back, however she could. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from David Bowie's "Heroes" (is that a BuckyNat song or what?).
> 
> Bucky's full serial number is taken from the _Captain America: the First Avenger_ tie-in comic.
> 
> Bucky remembers the Latin version of Matthew 10:34, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (KJV).
> 
> Natasha's perfume is [BPAL's "La Petite Mort."](https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/shop/ars-amatoria/la-petite-mort/)


End file.
